"With him, have
you? I could hear voices. What sort of a man is he?"
"He seems to be an ass," said Denry. "Fearfully haw-haw. Couldn't stand
him for long. I've made him believe we've been married for two years."
II
They stood on the balcony of the Hotel Beau-Site of Mont Pridoux. A
little below, to the right, was the other hotel, the Metropole, with the
red-and-white Swiss flag waving over its central tower. A little below
that was the terminal station of the funicular railway from Montreux.
The railway ran down the sheer of the mountain into the roofs of
Montreux, like a wire. On it, two toy trains crawled towards each other,
like flies climbing and descending a wall. Beyond the fringe of hotels
that constituted Montreux was a strip of water, and beyond the water a
range of hills white at the top.
"So these are the Alps!" Nellie exclaimed.
She was disappointed; he also. But when Denry learnt from the guide-book
and by inquiry that the strip of lake was seven miles across, and the
highest notched peaks ten thousand feet above the sea and twenty-five
miles off, Nellie gasped and was content.
They liked the Hotel Beau-Site.
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